Sunday, March 3, 2013

Real Life Sucks

Well, it's been a while. A round of the flu bug at home and at school meant for lots of late nights, either grading or working with students as they tried to get caught up on their missing work. In addition to all that, there's the life of teenage children who need someone to haul them to this place or that, or to be picked up at this place or that, and "oh, by the way, can you drop off so-and-so or pick up so-and-so?" And all this sucks away time to sit down and write.

Sorry for the terse reports below, but I can't remember all the details.

Freeport Group
There has been problems with this group having a consistent attendance, so the challenges sometimes are more difficult because the group is missing its cleric and mage, or missing two of its fighters, or missing the cleric and the rangers. Anyway, we have now added a player who can be here consistently and be the mage. Now all we need is to get a cleric.

Anyway, the story so far is that the group continued to chase down the escaped mage in red & green. The first new player who joined the group decided to play a ranger instead of a cleric, despite the group needing a cleric and already having one ranger. But, that's their problem, not mine. So, the first order of business was to go back into the portal to try to track down the mage. They got as far as the 2nd room in the "prison" (for lack of a better word) which turned out to be a storeroom of sorts. The markings on the crates were indecipherable, but inspection led to the discovery of lots of little odd things like spices, clothes, mirrors, cannabis, poppy seed, leather straps, dowel rods, etc. Literally, the entire evening was spent with them going through crates. Then, as time neared to call and end to the game, they realized they had "wasted" the evening. I said, since they had fun it was not wasted.

Two weeks later, we meet again, now we're missing the two fighters. However, the new mage player holds his own as the group follows a lead about the red & green mage. They chase him to the new lighthouse being built. They storm it and fight all kinds of snake people as well as humans. At the top, they fight it out with Milton Drac and two cohorts who are trying to cast some spell upon the town. They stop it from happening and loot the place, forgetting they were chasing the runaway mage whom they never encountered. They pick up a few items and some experiences.

This last game, they realize that the mage was never seen so they head back to the lighthouse. The original mage of the group as well as the cleric are missing (and have been for 3+ adventures) but the group soldiers on. They find at the top of the lighthouse another portal, only more obvious. They tie a rope on a body and throw it through the cloudy doorway which is the portal and then haul it back. Then they enter. They find themselves on a grassy plain with odd smells and sounds all around them. The sun is different as are the moons. They discover dinosaur tracks and the tracks of the mage. They follow the mage's tracks which are two days old, and thus have to skirt a group of grazing stegosauri and a group of brachiosaurs. They crest a hill and see a tower off to their right and a mud village/city to their left, so they head to the city. The city guards are lizard folk, similar to the serpent people seen in the lighthouse. The guards lets the group in but pointedly tell them which way to the "human section". Once there, they discover that humans are not native to this world, the food here is poisonous, metal is scarce with iron worth as much as gold. They also learn of the mage, who is off in the tower with the "Lizard Wizard". So, they head that direction.

They get into the tower using the medallions they took from the snake people. They investigated the tower but set off a trap about halfway through, but they were able to grab the red & green wizard's diary before they were caught. They then tried to bluff their way through grabbing the wizard but he managed to buy them off, for a little bit, with a jewel. So, we left off with them awaiting him at the portal back home. They are planning on bringing in a batch of iron scrap with some weapons and armor to sell and make some money before the lighthouse is destroyed.

CSIO/Charlie's SF & Fantasy Adventure
I guess the CSIO game is dead and I take the blame for that. I didn't get the tone set properly from the start and it was way too hard to get it back. Charlie stepped up with a SF/Fantasy adventure using S&W rules. So, we're adventurers who are terrible at adventuring. I think I already discussed the game in which we found a crashed starship. So, following up from there, we went after the escaped criminal from the ship. After two weeks moving across the plains and such, we never lost him but we never gained on him either. Finally, we encountered a caravan parked in the middle of nowhere. Talking with the half-orcs and humans we see walking around we learned that the two very large pink flamingos in the center of camp were the leaders. The one with the top hat and monocle was awake and polite as we asked about the guy we were chasing. He hadn't seen it but his mate might have, she'll be awake next week if we wanted to wait. Talking with the humans, we discover they were charmed or something and cannot remember which way he went or what he took with him. While we were talking, a group of gnomes riding perytons arrived. We talked with them and got them to take us in the direction the escapee apparently went. (Charlie had seen a picture of the peryton online and called it a "deer eagle" and made up stats. When I showed him the peryton in the AD&D manual, he changed what they were because "perytons are better".)

Climbing on their backs, we headed off only to be attacked by a blue dragon. We finally defeat it, after exhausting our laser pistols. And we stopped as we neared the town where the escapee is supposed to be going, hopefully we got there before he did.

White Box Interlude
The last game that was supposed to be run by Charlie ended up being run by Stan because Charlie had a rough week at work and hadn't put any thought into a game. Stan pulled out an interesting little one page dungeon with some pregens and we jumped right into a game. We ended up fighting a group of orcs, a few dire rats, a basilisk, and a medusa. For two fighters, a mage and a cleric, we managed to somehow survive. We enjoyed the game and might play it some more in the future.